


Haunted Palace Corridors

by LyraNgalia



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Episode: s03e02 The Sign of Three, F/M, John Watson's Wedding, Season/Series 03 Spoilers, Sherlock's Mind Palace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-07
Updated: 2014-01-07
Packaged: 2018-01-07 20:22:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1123994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LyraNgalia/pseuds/LyraNgalia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As he leaves John and Mary Watson's wedding, Sherlock Holmes seeks the one Woman who matters in the only place he knows to find her: his mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Haunted Palace Corridors

**Author's Note:**

> A thousand thanks to [TrixiePareidolia](http://archiveofourown.org/users/TrixiePareidolia) for the lightning quick beta, even though Adlock isn't her main ship, she puts up with me and my madness in all its myriad forms.

The fact that the night was still warm had absolutely no bearing on whether or not Sherlock Holmes pulled on his coat. He was Sherlock Holmes. He wore his coat. With its collar up. Other things that did not matter to him: the scents of the five different types of trailing roses that covered John and Mary's wedding venue, the direction of the slight breeze that brought said scents to his nose, the clinging grass and loamy lawn that spoke to a hasty watering this morning, the crunch of stone beneath his shoes. Those were things he knew existed, things that he recognized were about him, things that he sorted and filed away in his mind palace--  
  
  
His mind palace.  
  
  
He reached for it, for the vaulted ceilings and rich wood and neat corridors of his mind, reached for the data that made up his cases, made up the existence he knew, the existence he wanted for himself. Sherlock reached for his mind palace, refusing to believe it was because he felt _lonely_ , refused to believe it was because he was unhappy at feeling lonely, and certainly not because he wanted the presence of the one Woman whose existence made him feel less like a singular oddity in the world.  
  
  
As he walked away from John and Mary's wedding, away from the noise of music and cheering friends, the familiar confines of his mind palace grew up around his awareness, superimposing itself over the garden path sloppily raked by the gardener with the limp. Rich wood paneling, red leather upholstered chairs, data filed away in polished walnut curio cabinets and mahogany shelves full of filing. The floor of his mind palace was thickly covered in plush white carpet (no, he didn't like white carpet, white carpet was from the Woman's flat in Belgravia), white carpet became polished wood, old and worn satiny with age, wood that he knew would feel cool and smooth against his burning cheek where the Woman had struck him--  
  
  
No, he tried to concentrate, tried to change the flooring of his mind palace to something else, something from his childhood perhaps. When it didn't work, he tried to convince himself that he liked the polished wood, that it was simply there because he liked it.  
  
  
He refused to think of the Woman's flat.  
  
  
It did not stop him from walking through his mind palace, did not stop his steps from quickening when he encountered room after room of curiosities, of samples of tobacco ash and wool in various stages of decomposition. Rooms full of facts, full of experiments, of _things_ but empty of people. He hurried through them, his own biting words echoing in his mind, through the halls of his mind palace.  
  
  
 _Out of my head. I am_ busy.  
  
  
Seven words, echoing like a beating drum, driving into him a sudden fear, an irrational fear that he had somehow managed to actually banish the Woman from his brain. Not that he actually _could_ , had never been able to before. She appeared in his mind palace like a queen, like a ghost, the one unpredictable constant in the frozen crystal palace of his brain. She would not be banished. _Could_ not be banished. He refused to believe she could be.  
  
  
It did not make the hallways of his mind less empty, less echoing and labyrinthine.  
  
  
He rounded a corner, entered a library, hung with tapestries in varied faded conditions, from precise exposures to sun. The library itself was as empty as everything else, but he reached for the curio cabinet in this room, this one made of carved pale ivory rather than walnut. He knew what should be in here: a sample of perfume rich with sandalwood and vanilla and edged with bergamot, Casmir by Chopard; a lipstick, red as blood, slightly waxy, hard to scrub off his skin; tiny flakes of red nail varnish like flecks of dried blood from a body; his coat, with feminine warmth and that perfume clinging to it; a bottle containing three tears, catching the light of Mycroft's house, _Please, I won't even last six months;_ and the beat of a racing heart, a racing heart that could drown out his own rising fear, that would drown out the seven pounding words echoing in his brain.  
  
  
 _Out of my head. I am_ busy.  
  
  
He reached for the ivory curio cabinet, throwing open its doors to the minute recollections of his mind.  
  
  
And found it utterly empty.  
  
  
His breath coming quick as he walked, as Sherlock Holmes walked alone (always alone, walking away, left behind) in his mind and in the world. He spun in his mind, spun in place on the sidewalk, looking up at the clear cloudless sky and the coffered ceiling of his mind palace.  
  
  
“Woman!” Whether the cry was only in his mind or into the empty night, Sherlock Holmes could not be certain. “I am _busy_. Isn't this how you torment me? Coming when you're not wanted? Well, you're _not wanted_ right this moment!”  
  
  
And nothing greeted him. No telltale gunshot steps from stiletto heels. (Louboutins, red leather soles). No teasing perfume. No glint of diamonds against pale flawless skin. Nothing but the smell of five different types of trailing roses, nothing but the sky above, nothing but the feel of loam against his feet and the earthy scent of it working its way into his brain, reminding him of rot and worms.  
  
  
Nothing but rot and worms and the subtle crunch of an approaching town car against a gravel drive.  
  
  
The walls of his mind palace wavered as the world beyond it grew sharper into focus at the sound of the town car Sherlock realized his throat was hoarse. Had he been shouting? His breathing was hard. He'd been running. He looked up at the polished town car, rented, no doubt for John and Mary's weekend holiday, and forced himself to slow his breathing, forced himself to straighten despite the fact that his hands shook and his fists hurt from clenching them at his side. He straightened, and gave the driver a look down his nose.  
  
  
He was Sherlock Holmes, not a madman shouting at nothing.  
  
  
He was Sherlock Holmes.  
  
  
Just Sherlock Holmes.

 

He waited for the town car to pull away, to continue its ponderous way towards the wedding venue, but instead it slowed, stopped, and Sherlock forced back a sigh of disgust. A late guest, no doubt. Very late. Some excuse or another. Too well-cared for of a car for it to be Harry.  
  
  
“Don't stop now,” Sherlock snapped as the tinted passenger window rolled down. He gestured at the venue ahead. “That way to the happy couple.”  
  
  
A voice, so painfully familiar and so recently denied that Sherlock for a quarter-second entertained the idea that he'd actually lost his mind, drifted from the depths of the town car like the perfume he had been searching for.  
  
  
“I believe you owe me a dance, Mr. Holmes.”


End file.
